Finally a new chapter! I'm sorry! I'm on LJ a lot more than here, and I keep forgetting to add new chapters here as well. Enjoy!

XXX. PERIL

It happened fast. One moment, they were riding under the thick heat of the midday sun, all quiet save for the sounds of the horses and a hundred men marching. And then in the next, banelings came swarming in on all sides. It seemed to Kahlan that they rose up out of the very ground, as sudden as a sandstorm. The calm, unending day turned violent in an instant, and all around her exploded into chaos. A D'Haran soldier, whose name she did not even know, grabbed her horse's bridle, just in time to keep it from rearing and throwing her.

Immediately, twelve of the men formed a ring around her, bristling steel to keep her safe. It roped her off from the mad screams and the clash of steel on steel, but Kahlan twisted and turned in the saddle, trying to see through to the turmoil for any sign of Richard. He'd rode at her side all day, but had ridden back just before the attack to speak to the men at the rear.

Nox was in the ring of soldiers guarding her, and when the baneling attacking him fell dead, she urged her horse towards him. "General!" she called. "Where's Richard? You have to find him."

Nox looked up, deep blue eyes glinting in the light. Already he was streaked with blood and sweat. "Can't do that, Mother Confessor," he said. "Lord Rahl has ordered me to stay by your side. We're all to fall before harm comes to you."

He turned away abruptly to block another blow, and Kahlan was left alone in the silent eye of the storm. Her horse tossed its head, and she gentled a hand down its neck, soothing it absently as she searched for Richard.

She spotted him at last, fighting his way through a cluster of banelings. The moment he laid eyes on her, she could see the relief cross his face. He kept an eye on her at all times while he fought, though he was still struggling to cut a path through the bodies. And so it was that he was looking left to her when he should have been looking right, and a baneling's blade came around to bite into his side. Kahlan screamed as she watched him crumple and grab at the wound, only to force himself to his feet in the next moment, spearing the baneling through the heart. Blood spilled red around his fingers, and he kept a tight grip on the wound.

No one came to his aid. All the men were blocked by banelings, save for the twelve who guarded her. "Go to him," she screamed at the soldiers, tears streaking down her face. She turned her horse in wild circles, taking in the twelve men in their boiled leather, swords clenched in meaty fists, axes and maces strapped to their backs in abundance. They were the biggest, the strongest, the very best. The ones Richard needed with him most.

"Go to him, please," she wept as she watched Richard let go of the wound to fight yet another baneling, his shirt now soaked in blood. The soldiers ringing her remained impassive. One stepped into the circle and took the reins from her, as if he expected she might try to bolt. And so Kahlan swung her leg over the saddle instead, her belly almost toppling her in the process. With a prayer to the spirits that her feet would find the ground, she let herself fall. The same soldier caught her, but she tore from his arms and ran. She could not even see Richard now, and the uncertainty made her sick with grief. Her feet floundered in the sand, and then it was Nox who wrapped a massive arm around her just as she reached the edge of the circle.

His voice was low and rough at her ear, "Do not run for him, Mother Confessor, or you will lay waste to his heart." He thrust her back behind him into the circle where she could not even see his face, and fear and pain brought her to her knees. Her hands clutched at her belly, and she wept as steel clashed all around her. It seemed forever before the world at last fell silent, and the circle around her began to spread. Kahlan staggered to her feet again, heart beating wildly, to survey the dead. Only two of their own had been lost, though all the banelings now lay dead, and Richard was not counted among them. He still stood and walked towards her, a grimace on his face and a hand to his wound. Zedd and Cara came running up just as he reached her.

"Kahlan, breathe," he said in a calm, quiet voice though he was the one who was injured. "You need to breathe." She gasped in a breath, shaking her head as fresh tears spilled from her eyes.

"You, you almost died," she choked out, but Richard only shushed her. He lifted his hand from the wound.

"It glanced off my ribs, that's all. It's not very deep. Look, it's hardly bleeding anymore." But she couldn't stop staring at the blood on his shirt and his hands. "It's my own fault anyway," he said, wincing as he clamped his fingers back over the wound. Even though he was trying his best not to show it, she could tell it pained him a great deal. "I let myself get distracted."

By her. Kahlan swallowed the lump in her throat. He'd been distracted by her. "They wouldn't go to you," she hissed, still furious at the grim-faced wall of men that had kept her back.

Richard nodded. "I know. I saw. I told them to guard you at all costs if we were attacked on the way to Isham." He looked over at Nox. "You did everything right," he told the general. "Thank you for keeping her safe."

"But you could've died!" she cried, wild, angry-sounding sobs forcing their way up from her lungs.

"Better I pay that price than you," said Richard. His voice was solemn and hard, cutting straight to her bones.

No, she wanted to shriek. No, it was not better at all. But she at last took notice of how the men all stared at her. She sucked in another rattling breath, her shoulders shaking. She tried to compose herself so they wouldn't wonder why their new Lord Rahl had chosen such a weak, sniveling woman. It was no use; her eyes still leaked tears.

"Kahlan," said Richard. He drew closer, shielding her from the soldiers. "I'm well, do you hear me? I will live. Zedd will heal this, and I'll be all in one piece again. I need you to calm down, okay? For her?" His hands dropped to rest on her belly, fingers leaving bloodstains on the white fabric of her dress. "She needs her mother to be calm, Kahlan. Can you do that for her?"

Kahlan nodded, gulping down another breath. "I can," she whispered.

"Good." He smiled at her like she'd just given him a priceless gift, but all she could think was that he could have been dead. Long after Zedd came up and healed him, it still played over and over in her mind. He could've been dead.

xxx

She couldn't sleep that night. Kahlan lay a long time in the small tent the men had erected for her and Richard, watching him sleep while she tossed and turned and struggled to get comfortable. Her back ached continually, and her swollen sides were tight with cramps, as if her moon blood was only days from returning. She held her breath in the darkness, and tried not to weep. Richard had almost died because of her. And mere hours before that, death had nearly found him in the rift.

It seemed death was stalking ever closer, closing in around him. The prophecy came rushing back to the forefront of her mind, impossible to ignore.

The Keeper's daughters hunt the one conceived in sorrow – child of love and fury – for their master lusts for its soul. If he gains it, the one in white will perish and all life shall follow her. But, if by the Creator's grace, the one bound to the blade is given to the world of the dead, the child will be born into a storm that promises hope for the world of the living.

Even Richard was starting to view his death as a good thing, a worthwhile thing if it spared her life. And now the D'Harans, who were sworn to protect him, stayed at her side instead. She was a distraction, and she would be his death. The prophecy promised as much.

Kahlan struggled to push herself up, floundering on either side of her enormous belly. When at last she was sitting, she had to stop a long time and rest, wringing the blanket in her hands to keep from crying out as her cramps worsened, sending an ache burning across her belly and down her back.

As soon as she could, she groped for her pack in the darkness, blindly searching until her hand closed around candle and flint. There was a spark and a flame, and the candle lit. She looked to Richard, fearing he would wake. He was always a light sleeper, waking nearly every time she so much as shifted, but he did not even stir. Two injuries healed by magic in less than a day had left him utterly exhausted. That knowledge only strengthened her resolve. Kahlan fished out her quill and a lone scrap of parchment, and by the light of a single, flickering flame, she began to write.

It took a long time. She had to pause regularly in her letter writing as fresh pains assailed her belly and back, leaving her unable to concentrate on her work until they subsided. Kahlan wrote faster with the passing of each bitter cramp. The sooner she could get out of the tent and stretch her legs, the sooner the pain would subside. Tears prickled in the corners of her eyes, and it seemed to her that her heart beat too loudly inside the silent tent. When she was finished, she stopped and studied the letter, hunching close over the flame to read it.

My dearest Richard,

By the time you read this, I will be nearly all the way safely to Isham. I will stay there until you seal the rift and come for me. I was being selfish, wanting to keep you near me, but the good of the world must come before my own whims and desires.

The people need you now, and I have become a distraction to you and your new men. I can't fight anymore, and I have no place in a battle. I could not live with myself if I was the cause of your death, and if I stay here, I will bring the prophecy down on you.

Don't worry about me. I will have one of your men escort me to Isham. Do not come before the world is safe, Richard. You're the Seeker, and Lord Rahl now, and you can do this. I have never once doubted that. Your daughter and I will be waiting for you there, and we will all be spared the prophecy. Please, know how much I love you. My heart is yours and only yours, in this world, and the one beyond.

All my love,

Kahlan Amnell

She left the note beside him on her empty bedroll. Her heart begged her to wait until morning, but that was not possible. If she did, he would never let her go. And Kahlan knew she would not have the strength to leave if they spoke face to face. She would cling to him, and beg him to stay by her side until long after their babe was born, while outside their walls, the world would fall. She kissed her fingertip and pressed it to his cheek. And with a final look at his sleeping face, Kahlan blew out the candle and slipped away into the night.